indieBRAG Battles BBBR!

What is BBBR you ask?

I will explain but first let me share some facts that will come as no surprise to most of you:

• Bowker, an industry research group, reported that 458 thousand books were self-published in the United States in 2013, an increase of 17% versus the prior year, and 437% versus 2008.
• In contrast, the number of traditionally published books has remained basically flat at 305 thousand for the past five years.
• A quarter of the top 100 bestselling Kindle books on Amazon.com in 2012 were self-published via KDP, according to a spokesperson for Amazon. And this trend is expected to continue.

I could go on but clearly there is an inexorable shift occurring in the publishing industry away from traditionally published books toward their indie counterparts. That’s the good news for all of us who care about quality indie books and their dedicated authors. So what’s the bad news? Well, the operative word in the preceding sentence was ‘quality”. Unfortunately, as we have seen first-hand at indieBRAG, up to 90% of all indie books are poorly written and edited. Or, as one traditional publisher said somewhat inelegantly, “the overwhelming majority are terrible—unutterable rubbish.”

Which brings me back to the dreaded BBBR: it stands for Bad Book Buyer’s Remorse. This is what happens when an unsuspecting buyer orders a book from amazon.com or the like, only to discover that it is one of the nine out of ten bad indie books that are filling up online digital book shelves.

So what’s the solution? It is the B.R.A.G. Medallion of course! With your continued help and support, we will teach the book buying public to look for our Medallion. It is the only sure way to avoid the dreaded BBBR!

Bob at indieBRAG